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   Vol.65/No.42            November 5, 2001 
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
 
November 5, 1976
LOS ANGELES--Citing the legal precedents established in the federal suit of the Socialist Workers Party against government disruption of political activities, the Raza Unida party of Texas has demanded that the FBI immediately make available the complete secret files that it maintains on the party.

In a September letter to FBI director Clarence Kelley, Dr. Armando Gutiérrez noted that the presiding judge in the SWP case had ordered the FBI to turn over all files without exception. The same thing should be done for the Raza Unida party, Gutiérrez said, without the need for similar court action.

A professor of Chicano studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Gutiérrez is vice-chairperson of the Texas RUP and head of its Legal Defense Fund, which is handling the disclosure action.

The decision to take action on this issue was unanimously agreed to by the party's September state convention.

At the convention, Dr. Gutiérrez called the attention of the delegates to revelations of FBI harassment of the SWP and others stemming from the socialists' damage suit.

There is every reason to believe, Gutiérrez said, that the Raza Unida party has been the target of a similar FBI campaign.

The first evidence in this direction was already in hand with the receipt of a CIA file by José Angel Gutiérrez, founding leader of the Crystal City RUP and now Zavala County judge.

Last April, Judge Gutiérrez wrote to the FBI and CIA requesting, under the Freedom of Information Act, his own file and that of the RUP.  
 
November 5, 1951
Insurgent dock workers in the Port of New York are waging a magnificent struggle against great odds which has aroused the respect and admiration of every trade union militant. For three weeks now, they have fought off every attempt to break their strike against the sell-out agreement cooked up between union president Joseph Ryan and the employers.

From the beginning they had to beat back the gangs of professional strikebreakers and muscle-men recruited and led by Ryan's gun-toting henchmen.

Their picket line demonstrations in front of City Hall, held in defiance of out-of-bounds restrictions, compelled the city authorities to curb the brutality of the mounted cops.

They sent one of Truman's sharpshooting mediators back to Washington with his inflated ego punctured by their uncompromising rejection of his strikebreaking return-to-work-and-we'll-negotiate-afterwards plea.

When Truman himself called for a return to work on the basis of the Ryan contract in the interest of "national defense" the dock workers indignantly spurned the siren call of the White House strikebreaker.

The rebel strike against Ryan has raised a great hue and cry about corruption, racketeering and crime on the waterfront. Capitalist politicians are demanding investigations. Capitalist newspapers print pious editorials deploring the situation. All advise the men to return to work and let the ward heelers and editorial writers fix things up.

But the men have learned better... The dock workers have been the long suffering victims and it is the dock workers themselves who will have to clean up the filthy mess...  
 
 
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